by the repeal of the Corn Laws or hastened by other influences, such as foreign competition—­by the time this crisis arrives, the English people will have had enough of being plundered by the capitalists and left to starve when the capitalists no longer require their services.  If, up to that time, the English bourgeoisie does not pause to reflect—­and to all appearance it certainly will not do so—­a revolution will follow with which none hitherto known can be compared.  The proletarians, driven to despair, will seize the torch which Stephens has preached to them; the vengeance of the people will come down with a wrath of which the rage of 1793 gives no true idea.  The war of the poor against the rich will be the bloodiest ever waged.  Even the union of a part of the bourgeoisie with the proletariat, even a general reform of the bourgeoisie, would not help matters.  Besides, the change of heart of the bourgeoisie could only go as far as a lukewarm juste-milieu; the more determined, uniting with the workers, would only form a new Gironde, and succumb in the course of the mighty development.  The prejudices of a whole class cannot be laid aside like an old coat:  least of all, those of the stable, narrow, selfish English bourgeoisie.  These are all inferences which may be drawn with the greatest certainty:  conclusions, the premises for which are undeniable facts, partly of historical development, partly facts inherent in human nature.  Prophecy is nowhere so easy as in England, where all the component elements of society are clearly defined and sharply separated.  The revolution must come; it is already too late to bring about a peaceful solution; but it can be made more gentle than that prophesied in the foregoing pages.  This depends, however, more upon the development of the proletariat than upon that of the bourgeoisie.  In proportion, as the proletariat absorbs socialistic and communistic elements, will the revolution diminish in bloodshed, revenge, and savagery.  Communism stands, in principle, above the breach between bourgeoisie and proletariat, recognises only its historic significance for the present, but not its justification for the future:  wishes, indeed, to bridge over this chasm, to do away with all class antagonisms.  Hence it recognises as justified, so long as the struggle exists, the exasperation of the proletariat towards its oppressors as a necessity, as the most important lever for a labour movement just beginning; but it goes beyond this exasperation, because Communism is a question of humanity and not of the workers alone.  Besides, it does not occur to any Communist to wish to revenge himself upon individuals, or to believe that, in general, the single bourgeois can act otherwise, under existing circumstances, than he does act.  English Socialism, i.e.  Communism, rests directly upon the irresponsibility of the individual.  Thus the more the English workers absorb communistic ideas, the more superfluous becomes their present